nerve and self-confidence for a man to climb into the cockpit of a biplane and embark on a flight across the wild land that is still much of Alaska.
Airplanes were commonly forced down by weather, lack of fuel, a lost pilot, or mechanical problems. A communication system that we of today would regard as primitive saved the day for many a pilot. In 1922, and for years after, there were forty-eight U.S. Army Signal Corp stations in the Territory manned by 250 men and officers. They operated a mixture of telegraph and Morse-code-type radios in villages and remote stations. Telegraph wires were strung almost Territory-wide on the mainland. An underwater cable lay on the sea bottom between Southeastern Alaska towns and Seattle; a telegraph line connected Fairbanks and Seward.
It’s winter, flying from Fairbanks, your plane noses over during a landing, and your metal prop hits the ground and is bent and unusable. If it is wood it has shattered. You hike along a dog team trail that is brushed out and maintained by the Territory, and maybe you’ll get a dog sled ride, maybe not. Usually within a few days you arrive at a village or roadhouse with a telegraph or radio station where you can send a message to Fairbanks.
If a prop can’t be sent by plane, it will arrive via dog team. It might be a scheduled dog team mail sled, or a hired dog team. This might take weeks, but that’s the way life was then.
By the late 1920s cabin planes had started to replace the inefficient and frigid cockpits. Some of these planes had reliable air-cooled engines. At the same time, high wing monoplanes started to replace the biplanes.
In the beginning, the various commercial aviation companies and their pilots and mechanics resembled a small, sometimes quarrelsome family. Pilots and mechanics commonly changed from one company to another. Pilots often flew the planes of competing companies and no one though it unusual. When a pilot and his plane went missing, other pilots, with few exceptions, and regardless of company loyalty, participated in the aerial search for him.
In November, 1929, world-famous pilot Ben Eielson and his mechanic, Earl Borland, flew from the tiny coastal Alaska village of Teller into a snowstorm that raged over the Bering Sea. They were bound for the ice-locked trading ship Nanuk in Siberia which held a cargo of valuable furs. They were to fly the furs to Fairbanks to be transshipped to the New York fur market.
Their airplane didn’t arrive at the trading vessel, nor did it return to Teller.
The winter search for the missing plane became the climactic Alaskan aviation event of the 1920s that was followed in news accounts by millions around the world. Between fierce storms searching pilots clothed head-to-toes in fur flew through brutal deep cold in open-cockpit biplanes. Daylight hours were dim and brief, for the sun remained below or close to the horizon.
Searching pilots first had to cross sixty miles of the ice-choked Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia. They then followed the wild and barren Asian coast 375 miles to Nanuk, the base from which they flew their searches. Every foot they flew posed major flight hazards.
Today, despite the advances in quality and dependability of airplanes, even modern pilots would consider such flying as extremely risky.
It was late January before the missing plane was found.
Alaska’s aviation family of the 1920s included heroic and bold pilots. They had to be adventuresome to do the flying they did. Those early fliers well-deserved the praise and affection bestowed upon them.
In this volume I have portrayed a handful of these men, concentrating largely on a few who pioneered aviation in Alaska’s vast and rugged Interior, and who also participated in the search for the lost Eielson and Borland.
Alaska’s aviation industry was a struggling infant during the 1920s. Eventually it became a giant upon which today’s rural and not so-rural Alaskans are totally dependent. What would modern Alaska be without airplanes and bush pilots?
— JIM REARDEN
SprucewoodHomer, Alaska
Acknowledgments
Richard Wien, lifelong resident of Fairbanks, and a long time commercial pilot, got me involved in the stories told in this volume. Not only that, to accompany the stories, he generously supplied beautiful, historic and irreplaceable photos from his father Noel’s collection. Further, he carefully read early drafts and guided me through many aviation pitfalls. He contributed technical aviation aspects, as well as memories of his father’s stories of the pilots and the times covered herein. Many thanks, Richard. Somehow that seems an inadequate way to express my appreciation for all your favors.
My wife Audrey, son Michael Rearden, and daughter Mary Bookman carefully read early drafts of this tome. Audrey’s sharp eyes spotted typos and fuzzy wording; Mike the same, plus he did on-line computer research to fill many gaps I was unable to fill; Mary rearranged my comas, periods, and sentences into more acceptable form. My deep thanks for a family that didn’t hesitate to criticize.
Homer Dr. Paul Eneboe, the Rearden family physician for four decades, and an avid reader, found an abundance of material in an early draft that needed reorganizing. I asked him for comments because I knew he wouldn’t hold back, and I was right. He convinced me to make major changes from my original approach to this story. Thanks, Paul, you were right.
My thanks also to LD. “Corky” Corkran, CEO of the Pioneer Air Museum at Fairbanks, who was most helpful when I arrived at his fine museum to take photos and notes for this book.
Thanks to the Bob Reeve family for permission to use the Harvey Goodale portraits of Noel Wien and Ed Young. Early Alaska pilot Bob Reeve commissioned Goodale to produce a wonderful set of about two dozen portraits of Alaska’s early pilots, including these two.
Mary Carlson at the Hatton-Eielson Museum, in Hatton, North Dakota, provided photos and helpful information on Ben Eielson, plus permission to use the elegant portrait of Eielson that appears on the cover of this volume. Many thanks, Mary.
Terrence Cole, Professor of History at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, obligingly read an advance draft of the manuscript and generously provided the comments that appear on the back cover. Many thanks, Terrence.
To the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, long the finest newspaper in Alaska, thanks again for allowing me to use in one of my books quotes from your pages.
My thanks too to Stan Cohen, publisher, who continues to publish my books. Of the seven publishers who have printed my books, Cohen’s Pictorial Histories Publishing Company has been by far the most satisfying. This book is my eleventh with his company’s imprint. Stan Cohen’s word over the telephone is more dependable than a written contract with some publishers I could name.
Kitty Herrin, of Arrow Graphics, at Missoula, Montana, has expertly designed all eleven of the books I have written for Pictorial Histories Publishing. Kitty’s skill at presenting my clumsy writings in gracefully designed books is to me a constant source of amazement. Thanks, Kitty, for the quality of your work.
— JIM REARDEN
SprucewoodHomer, Alaska
Book One
THE BEGINNINGS
Carl Ben Eielson in his twenties in the type of dress affected by outdoorsmen at the time; “chokebore” pants with
